


nails and dynamite

by nowrunalong



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Fluff, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 02:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14392116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowrunalong/pseuds/nowrunalong
Summary: "Maybe I should take my business elsewhere. This establishment doesn’t know how to treat a returning customer.”“Okay,” Fiona agrees easily.“What? You’re supposed to want my business.”“I don’t want your business anywhere near my sister. And that—that was not a euphemism for—ugh, you know what? Go somewhere else, see if I care.”Or, five times Rhys comes back and one time he doesn’t have to leave.





	nails and dynamite

**one**

“He’s back,” Fiona says, an aside to Sasha, and then addresses the man at the counter. “You’re back!” Turning toward Sasha again, she adds, “I _told_ you he’d come back.”

“This was a… a topic of discussion?” the man asks. He looks nervous, which makes Fiona grin wider. 

“No,” Sasha says.

The man frowns.

“Yes,” Fiona says.

“Could I get a coffee?” the man asks, rubbing the back of his neck in an obvious show of discomfort. “Since that is, you know, typically why one comes to a coffee… shop… or, I could come back later,” he adds. “When you’re less… uh…” He looks from Fiona, who’s raising her eybrows significantly at her sister, to Sasha, who’s staring back at Fiona and shaking her head. “Busy?” he finishes awkwardly.

Fiona whips around, then, her eyebrows furrowing into an accusatory frown. “I know why you’re here.”

“For coffee?” the man tries, pasting a friendly smile across his face.

Fiona regards him critically for a moment and then drops the frown again, swapping it for a deceptively innocent look. “Sure. What can I get you?”

“Literally just—a coffee.”

“Dark or medium roast?”

“Medium.”

“Your name?”

“You never ask—“

“Your name,” Fiona repeats, more forcefully. She’s still smiling.

“Rhys. With a Y.”

Fiona takes Rhys’s change and then makes a big show of writing something on the cup, filling it with coffee, and then slapping it down on the counter in front of him. “Coffee,” she says, and pushes it closer.

Rhys picks up the cup and regards the message scrawled on its side with wide eyes. “I wasn’t—I’m not…” He looks over at the corner of the shop: sometime in between her staring match with Fiona and this moment, Sasha had moved to sit at one of the tables. He lowers his voice. “I’m not!”

“No?”

“I’m not st-stalking your—I go to school across the street!”

“Uh-huh.”

“I do!”

“I see you making googly eyes at her every time you come here,” Fiona hisses.

“I would never!” Rhys says, hand over his heart. He lowers it again when Fiona raises an eyebrow. “Well—”

“ _Well_?”

“I was just _saying_ ,” Rhys says emphatically, “that maybe I should take my business elsewhere. This establishment doesn’t know how to treat a returning customer.”

“Okay,” Fiona agrees easily.

“What? You’re supposed to _want_ my business.”

“I don’t want your _business_ anywhere near my _sister_. And that—that was not a euphemism for—ugh, you know what? Go somewhere else, see if I care.”

“I will,” Rhys says defiantly.

“Good.”

“Leaving now.”

“Excellent.”

“Never coming back.”

“Even better.”

“You’re a terrible barista, Fi,” Sasha says from the corner as the little bell over the door tinkles to indicates Rhys’ leaving.

Fiona can live with that.

 

**two**

Rhys comes back.

“Oh my God,” Fiona says, stepping out from the employee-only door just as Rhys steps up to the counter. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?”

“I work here, asshole!”

A couple customers seated by the front window turn to watch this exchange with mild interest, and Fiona adopts an indoor voice. “This clinches it. You are _absolutely_ stalking my sister.”

“She’s not even here!” Rhys makes a show of looking around the coffee shop, wide-eyed. “Do you see her anywhere? Nope! How ‘bout that!”

“Then why _are_ you here?”

“Coffee.”

“Yeah,” Fiona says. “Either that or you _know_ Sasha’s class ends at 3, and she’ll be here any minute.”

“I do _not_ know that! I mean, I know that _now_ , but I didn’t, and I never could have—okay, forget the coffee. So not worth it.”

“Hey,” Fiona says, and the intensity of the word stops Rhys on his way out the door.

He turns back and awaits her next words.

“She deserves better,” Fiona says, enunciating each syllable carefully. “She deserves better than someone like you.”

“You don’t know me,” Rhys says.

“I know your type.”

“Maybe I’ll surprise you,” Rhys says, and Fiona knows she’ll be seeing him again.

 

**three**

“Sasha’s not here,” Fiona says, the next time Rhys returns for a coffee. She forks over the cup and watches as Rhys adds a splash of milk and a single packet of sugar to his drink. He says nothing as he swirls the contents of his cup around and drops the wooden stir stick in the trash bin.

“I’m not here for Sasha,” he says finally.

“Right,” Fiona says. “You’re here for coffee.”

“Maybe I’m here for you. Huh? Have you even considered that?”

Fiona makes a face. “Sorry, buddy-boy. You’re not my type.”

To his credit, Rhys doesn’t look angry, or even insulted. “I didn’t mean like _that_ ,” he says.

Fiona continues to eye him suspiciously.

“I just meant,” Rhys says, “maybe we can talk?”

“About _what_? What on Earth would we have to talk about? Because I’m not telling you—”

“Oh my God, this isn’t about Sasha,” Rhys says, a little exasperated. “I just thought you might want, you know… a…” Rhys’s voice gets mumbly, and Fiona can’t make out his words.

“Might want—?”

“A friend,” Rhys repeats, a little more clearly, and Fiona stares at him incredulously.

“What part of anything I’ve ever said gave you that idea?”

Rhys laughs uncomfortably. “I know, I know. It’s crazy, right? I come here a few times, you chase me out, I come back, you chase me out, and—here I am again, like the cat.”

“The cat?”

“You know—the cat. The cat came back the very next day? Oh, the cat came back, we thought he was a goner, but the cat came back—he just wouldn’t stay awaaay.” Rhys finishes this last line in a bit of a sing-song and Fiona can’t help but smirk.

“Oh yeah,” she says. “That song.”

“You smiled,” Rhys says, grinning widely. “I knew I could do it.”

“That wasn’t a smile,” Fiona says, narrowing her eyes again. “It was a smirk. A _contemptuous_ smirk. Your singing sucks.”

“It was definitely a smile,” Rhys says, and he seems so pleased with himself that half of Fiona wants to hit him in the face and the other half of her is… a little bit charmed.

She’d never, ever, _ever_ say it aloud.

“I’ll see you around, Fiona,” Rhys says, waving in her direction with his free hand as he makes his way toward the door.

“Better not,” Fiona returns, but even she can tell her words lack vitriol.

 

**four**

“You really _are_ that pesky cat.”

“Hey, watch who you’re calling pesky,” Rhys says, wagging a finger, “or you won’t get to find out what’s in this super-secret birthday box.” He pulls a small, wrapped giftbox from his coat pocket and sets it down on the counter in front of Fiona.

“How did you know it was my birthday?”

“It’s on the menu board,” Rhys points out.

“ _Sasha_ ,” Fiona hisses, “I told her to take that off.”

Rhys shrugs. “Good thing she didn’t, though, ‘cause then you wouldn’t have this shiny new… whatever this is.” He grins. “Don’t you want to find out?”

“Why would _you_ bring me a present?”

“Felt like the thing to do.”

“Well, you can keep it,” Fiona says. “I don’t need your—‘whatever this is’. I haven’t celebrated my birthday since…” She narrows her eyes. “It’s none of your business.”

“Sasha seems to think it’s important.”

“I _knew_ this was about Sasha!” Fiona crows, suddenly triumphant. “I knew you weren’t here out of the—the goodness of your heart, or whatever.”

“It’s not,” Rhys says, “it’s—”

“You have your coffee,” Fiona says, tapping an angry finger against the counter, “so there’s no reason for you to be blocking up the cash. Why don’t you go away? Preferably far, and for a long time.”

Fiona doesn’t notice Rhys had left the box behind til he’s already gone, and she can’t exactly chase after him. She picks it up and shakes it gently, but it doesn’t make a sound. Dropping her arm, she lets the hand cradling the little box hover over the trash can. She lifts her fingers til she’s just holding on with her thumb and index finger, but she can’t let go.

As annoyed with herself as she is with Rhys, she pockets the box.

 

**five**

“If I told you I’d met someone,” Sasha says later that day, leaning against the counter and regarding Fiona with big eyes, “what would you say?”

Fiona frowns. “Have you?”

“Maybe.”

“Who? When will I meet him? Or her,” Fiona adds at Sasha’s look. “Is she nice?”

“You’ve met him,” Sasha says. “Recently. He’s cute.”

Fiona tries to write a mental list of the men she’s met recently and that she’d qualify as ‘cute’, but she comes up blank. “Uhhh,” she says, and Sasha rolls her eyes.

“We’re meeting here tonight,” Sasha says. “For a movie thing.”

“A date?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

“And I’ve met him.”

“A few times.”

“And he’s cute? And he’s— _Rhys_ ,” Fiona says, frowning as Rhys comes through the door, “what are you—this is so not the time.”

“Ah, I’ll bet you say that to all your paying customers,” Rhys says, good-natured. And then he turns to Sasha and does that _thing_ he does around her: the face with the slightly wide eyes and the slightly red cheeks and the slightly upturned can’t-believe-she’s-real mouth.

“Would you _stop_ that?” Fiona says impatiently. “Why can’t you make a normal-person face?”

“This is a—”

“Sasha. You should tell him you’re involved with someone.”

Rhys and Sasha look at her, and then Sasha moves from her sister to Rhys and slips her fingers through his.

“Fi… Rhys is my date.”

“What?”

“We’ve been going out for three weeks.”

“I—what?”

“I asked Rhys to stop by here from time to time to try to get to know you.”

“Without her being around,” Rhys adds. “Sasha thought you might do—see, that face you’re making right now? Not a normal-person face. Why do you get to talk about my face when you’re doing _that_ face?”

Fiona _is_ making a face. She can feel it, dumbfounded and angry, all creased forehead and squinted eyes.

She’s not even sure what she’s angry at. Not Sasha, certainly. Not even Rhys. Her whole life she’d wanted Sasha to grow up faster so that she wouldn’t have to look after her, but now Sasha is grown up and Fiona still can’t stop.

“We have to go,” Sasha says, and tugs Rhys toward the door. “We’ll talk later, Fi.”

Fiona watches them go and then removes the box from her pocket. She tosses it lightly from hand to hand; she can’t make out what might be inside.

Impatient now, she tears it open.

 

**six**

Fiona is still in the cafe when it hits 9 PM; Felix had left her to closing the register and gone upstairs to their apartment above the shop.

When Sasha comes home, Rhys is still with her.

“Hey Sash,” Fiona says. To Rhys, she adds, “Hey asshole.”

Sasha punches her lightly in the arm as she passes by the counter. It’s “I love you,” not “play nice,” which Fiona appreciates. She’ll be mean if she wants to.

The truth was, she’d started to not-hate Rhys’s company. He didn’t need to be nice to her. She never needed kindness from anyone, nor even expected it. But there he was, time and again, and _of course_ it was only because he’s hot for her sister.

It had been stupid to think they could actually be friends. Not that the thought had ever crossed her mind.

“I’m going to turn the front lights off and get us some drinks,” Sasha says, “you want anything, Fi?”

“No, thanks,” Fiona says, and she’s left alone with her sister’s new… _yeah_ , she’s not going there.

She’s left alone with Rhys.

An awkward silence hangs over the darkened coffee shop for a moment, and then Fiona says, “Why did you bring me that box?”

“Oh,” Rhys says, surprised. “Did you open it?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you, umm. Do you like it?”

Fiona’s hand hovers over her pocket, hesitating, and then she shrugs and pulls out the box. “It’s a puzzle box,” she says, prodding at the sliding pieces til they click into place. Once they do, she lifts the lid open. “An empty puzzle box.”

“You seem like someone with a lot of secrets,” Rhys says. “I thought you might want a safe place. Most people aren’t able to open it.”

“Can you?” Fiona asks.

“Er,” Rhys says, and then opts for honesty: “Yeah. Took me a lot of tries, though.”

“Okay,” Fiona says, and places the box back inside the pocket of her jacket.

“Okay?”

“Okay, I’ll give you a chance.”

Rhys looks like he’s about to argue, maybe go off on the I-don’t-need-your-permission spiel or something of the like, but instead, he bites his lip.

“Thanks,” he says. And then: “Do you want me to go?”

Fiona can hear Sasha’s footsteps upstairs, tapping rhythmically to the sound of Felix’s music as she moves around the kitchen. She sounds happy, and Fiona recognizes that part of that happiness is Rhys.

Inexplicably.

“No,” Fiona says. “No. You should stay.”


End file.
